Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains—the people, places, things, and ideas that have had the most positive and negative impacts on the city over the past 12 months. Cast your ballot until 5 p.m. on December 30. At noon on December 31, we’ll reveal your choices for Toronto’s Superhero and […]

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Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains—the people, places, things, and ideas that have had the most positive and negative impacts on the city over the past 12 months. Cast your ballot until 5 p.m. on December 30. At noon on December 31, we’ll reveal your choices for Toronto’s Superhero and Supervillain of the year.

Once, there was a man—and also an Applebee’s. Between the two, a friendship grew that would forever change the relationship between Facebook users and international chain restaurants.

Though the ‘Bee’s buzz didn’t last forever, this was just the beginning of a whirlwind year for Murray/Zdarsky. His comic book series Sex Criminals, co-created with Matt Fraction, was the undisputed darling of the comic world in 2014, winning the Will Eisner Award for Best New Series (which he, of course, accepted with dignity and grace) and sparking a spin-off, Just the Tips. The story of two people who use the power of their time-stopping orgasms to rob banks displays Zdarsky’s bizarre, slightly bitter, yet emotionally affecting sense of humour; the plot is ridiculous, but Zdarsky and Fraction mix very mature and nuanced representations of adolescence and healthy sexual lives with depictions of Toronto streetscapes that even include a few familiar faces in the background.

It’s likely that Toronto will soon have to learn to share its strangest funnyman with the crew to the south. He might not actually be able to stop time with his orgasms, but Zdarsky’s lasting legacy of dick jokes have undoubtedly stolen our hearts.

Anyone who spent any time in downtown Toronto in the mid-aughts will be familiar with former construction worker David Zancai. Zancai spent years patrolling the streets; shirtless and dressed in shorts, a Santa hat, and work boots, he’d be spotted doing knuckle push-ups in inopportune places, flexing, and shouting what would become his trademark phrase: […]

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A panel from Zanta: The Living Legend.

Anyone who spent any time in downtown Toronto in the mid-aughts will be familiar with former construction worker David Zancai. Zancai spent years patrolling the streets; shirtless and dressed in shorts, a Santa hat, and work boots, he’d be spotted doing knuckle push-ups in inopportune places, flexing, and shouting what would become his trademark phrase: “Yesyesyes!”

Eventually, Zanta found himself banned from most of the downtown core after repeatedly interrupting live broadcasts at the then–City TV building on Queen Street West, and in increasingly frequent conflicts with the police. These days, Zancai has hung up the hat, and lives with his mother in Etobicoke. He’s on psychiatric medication that, according to a recent Star article, he says he doesn’t need.

Local cartoonist Jason Kieffer has opted to immortalize Zanta in a new self-published graphic novel called Zanta: The Living Legend. Kieffer says he was fascinated by Zanta for a while before deciding to make the comic, but it wasn’t until Zanta was banned from downtown that he decided to turn his story into a book.

“I was like, ‘That’s wrong, you can’t do that,'” Kieffer told us. “Some people knew about the bans, but others don’t, and I thought it was important…. That’s not the right way to treat someone. He’s a real guy.”

Kieffer says he met the “real guy” behind Zanta when he went to Zancai’s Etobicoke apartment to interview him for the book.

“He was dressed up as Zanta, but he wasn’t doing his act,” Kieffer says of the meeting. “He’s not like the character on the street, where he’s loud, and dominant…. I found him to be a really kind, genuine person. That gets missed.”

This isn’t Kieffer’s first time illustrating street life in the city. In late 2009, he released a book called The Rabble of Downtown Toronto, which documented the appearance and quirks of various fixtures of Toronto street life, Zanta included. The book was criticized as a mockery of the city’s less fortunate and mentally ill, and earned Kieffer a Villian nomination for the 2010 edition of Torontoist‘s Heroes and Villains. Kieffer says he’s not worried about a similar backlash from this book.

“This book is more straightforward and presents my ideas in a more straight-up way,” he says. “It’s pretty clear that I’m on Zanta’s side…. There are people who are going to say that I’m exploiting Zanta or whatever, but, frankly, that’s insulting to his intelligence.”

For his part, Zancai is pleased with how he’s portrayed in the book, and flattered that someone thought he was book-worthy. “It’s a really nice book,” Zancai says. “He did a great job with that. I don’t know about royalties or anything, but the book is great.”

According to Kieffer, Zancai probably won’t be receiving any royalties, given the fact that the Kieffer self-published it.

“I’m hoping I might break even,” says Kieffer.

Kieffer says he wants Zanta: The Living Legend to both pay tribute to Zancai’s character, and to start a broader discussion about public space and what constitutes “normal.”

“My hope for the book is that it starts a larger discussion about the way we treat certain kinds of people in the city,” he says. “I want to generate and discussion about rights, and Zanta’s right to exist as Zanta downtown, and other people to be as eccentric as they want downtown, as long as they’re not hurting other people.”

Toronto artist Jeff Lemire is a bit of an anomaly. His earlier work, Essex County, is considered by many comics fans to be an example of a contemporary graphic novel done right: witty, emotional, and poignant, it captures life in small-town Ontario in a sizable, multi-volume tome. Lemire’s Underwater Welder, just released by Top Shelf […]

]]>Essex County explores father-and-son relationships by way of deep-water labour.

Image courtesy of Top Shelf Productions.

Toronto artist Jeff Lemire is a bit of an anomaly. His earlier work, Essex County, is considered by many comics fans to be an example of a contemporary graphic novel done right: witty, emotional, and poignant, it captures life in small-town Ontario in a sizable, multi-volume tome. Lemire’s Underwater Welder, just released by Top Shelf Productions, evokes that same feeling, only with a healthy dose of surreal, supernatural fiction.

This, coming from a guy who writes superhero books for DC Comics.

Lemire’s graphic novels don’t deal so much with comic-book-style horror and action. Instead, they tend toward primal emotions: fear, pain, and insecurity. Underwater Welder tells the story of Jack, a man of the titular profession who feels something calling to him in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

While the setting is Nova Scotia, Lemire keeps the backdrop minimal enough that the story could easily be set in any seaside town. Even so, knowing where the story takes place adds to the reading experience. There’s something distinctly Canadian about being tied to a place because of family and work. It’s Underwater Welder’s Nova Scotian backdrop that allows us to appreciate the weird events of the plot, as the mists, murky waters, and general isolation create a sense of foreboding.

Lemire’s use of silent panels allows readers to absorb what’s going on, and also leaves certain things open to interpretation. As with any good story with a dose of the weird, the reader will come up with explanations far better than what the author actually intended.

When there is dialogue, it’s to the point, and it doesn’t clutter the page. This makes it possible to dive deep into the book’s 200-plus pages without effort. The occasional lack of dialogue or expository captioning keeps Jack at a distance.

But why would an author not want his audience to know much about the protagonist?

Underwater Welder’s lack of concrete detail about its narrator (besides a suggestion that he may have had a traumatic childhood) leaves readers to fill in as many details as they want. This enables them to make the story theirs, instead of something that’s being relayed to them. For all we know, the book’s entire thematic focus on relationships between fathers and children could be nothing but a product of Jack’s warped mind. Jack’s narration comes only when the narrative is in the “present,” and this creates an air of uncertainty about what actually happened in the past.

These transitions between adulthood and childhood create abrupt shifts in tone. One minute, we’re learning concrete details about why Jack may be feeling the way he does. Flashbacks allow us to see where those feelings originated.

The shifts can be abrupt, almost like being slapped in the face with a wet trout. While that may not sound appealing, it suits the narrative. Lemire has found a way to convey the feeling of snapping back to reality, not through drawings alone, but also by pacing the story properly.

Lemire’s sudden transitions also serve to highlight the downright eeriness of the book’s latter half: we’re not any more certain that it actually happened than the protagonist is.

The book’s introduction (written by Lost‘s Damon Lindelof) compares Underwater Welder to a Twilight Zone episode, which is apt: it’s a plot that’s too fantastic to be real, but too creepily specific to not resonate. It’s emotional, and it feels genuine as it explores the growth of a jilted son into a father-to-be.

While you could call the ending optimistic, it leaves a haunting rot in the pit of the reader’s stomach. Jack’s personal journey seems to end as he emerges from the waves, but we remain in the void a little longer.

CORRECTION: August 8, 2012, 12:45 PM This post originally implied that Jeff Lemire no longer writes for DC Comics. This is incorrect. We apologize for this error.

Matt Demers writes about comics for Torontoist and other news web sites. You can follow/contact him on Twitter.

After months of searching, the Silver Snail has found a new shell. The popular comics-and-more shop will be leaving its Queen West storefront of 36 years to move to a second-floor location steps from Yonge and Dundas Square, at 329 Yonge Street, where its owners hope to have it open for business by July 1 […]

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It's even silver, kind of. The Silver Snail's new home, in the old HMV at 329 Yonge Street.

After months of searching, the Silver Snail has found a new shell.

The popular comics-and-more shop will be leaving its Queen West storefront of 36 years to move to a second-floor location steps from Yonge and Dundas Square, at 329 Yonge Street, where its owners hope to have it open for business by July 1 at the latest. The Silver Snail will continue to operate at its popular Queen West location until then.

Silver Snail’s owner, George Zotti, began to lay plans for the move when he found out that the store’s Queen West building had been sold for redevelopment. At first, he eyed the Annex for a potential new location, but eventually realized that the neighbourhood wasn’t a good fit. “The whole idea was to find an area that we liked with a space that we liked. We [really] liked the Annex, but we couldn’t find anything,” said Zotti. “Everything was really small—like 1,400 square feet, or something like that—or used to be a restaurant. To make a restaurant not a restaurant is very expensive.”

Zotti hopes the Yonge property, which faces Edward Street, will enable the store to take advantage of the area’s high pedestrian traffic and its proximity to the Eaton Centre, Ryerson University, and Dundas Station. Previously, commuting customers rode the Queen streetcar to Soho Street, or made the short walk from Osgoode Station.

“We saw the space, and, you know, you can’t get more ‘heart of the city’ than Yonge and Dundas,” Zotti said.

Recent tenants at 329 Yonge have included a clothing store and a large HMV, the latter of which is still in business. (It consolidated its floor plan, and now operates out of a storefront to the south.)

“Currently, at Queen Street, we have 2,700 feet of retail floor space,” said Zotti. “This new location will be 3,300 square feet, only on one floor. It’s very long, and much wider than the back of the [Queen] store is right now.”

The Snail will be sharing the neighborhood with the World’s Biggest Bookstore, BMV, and the Indigo in the Eaton Center, along with more specialized shops like 401 Games and One Million Comix. The competition would not be any less fierce in the Annex: that neighbourhood has The Beguiling, a well-known comic and graphic-novel shop, as well as a BMV with a large comics section on its third floor.

Zotti hopes to have the new Silver Snail up and running before the summer months, with as little transition time as possible.

Matt Demers is a Toronto freelancer who writes about comics, pop culture, and other nerdy things. You can find him on Twitter and his website.

CORRECTION: April 11, 2012, 5:20 P.M. This article originally said that the HMV that had once been a tenant at 329 Yonge Street “moved next door.” In fact the HMV had previously occupied the next-door storefront, but had once operated out of 329 Yonge Street as well. The article has been amended accordingly, and has also been edited to clarify the reason for Silver Snail’s move.

]]>http://torontoist.com/2012/04/silver-snail-gets-a-new-home/feed/49Comic Lovers Get a Clubhousehttp://torontoist.com/2012/03/comic-lovers-get-a-clubhouse/
http://torontoist.com/2012/03/comic-lovers-get-a-clubhouse/#commentsMon, 26 Mar 2012 17:30:33 +0000http://torontoist.com/?p=145975Simpsons-esque Comic Book Guys to be found at the opening of the Comic Book Lounge & Gallery.

The Comic Book Lounge & Gallery is more than just a comic book store. According to manager Joe Kilmartin, the College Street space, which celebrated its grand opening on Friday night, is meant to be a community hub. He wants Toronto’s comic fans to use the lounge as a place to bond over the titles […]

]]>Simpsons-esque Comic Book Guys to be found at the opening of the Comic Book Lounge & Gallery.

Comic fans party at the Comic Book Lounge & Gallery's's grand opening. Photo by Dean Bradley.

The Comic Book Lounge & Gallery is more than just a comic book store. According to manager Joe Kilmartin, the College Street space, which celebrated its grand opening on Friday night, is meant to be a community hub.

He wants Toronto’s comic fans to use the lounge as a place to bond over the titles they love.

“The whole idea is to have people come in, get their books, sit down a while, read, have a cup of coffee, listen to music, and take it easy,” he said.

The idea for the lounge came about following the January demise of Dragon Lady Comics, where Kilmartin was a manager. The upstairs space at 587 College Street, where the lounge is now located, was already home to both the Toronto Cartoonists Workshop and Guerilla Printing, a digital print shop that has worked on small comics and zines. When Comic Book Lounge co-owner Kevin Boyd, who is also the director of the Joe Shuster Awards and the event coordinator for FanExpo, first heard about Dragon Lady’s closure, he contacted Sean Menard, the mind behind the Toronto Cartoonists Workshop and Guerilla Printing, about using some of his vacant space.

“When I heard that Dragon Lady was closing,” said Boyd, “I went to Sean, the owner of the Cartoonists Workshop, and I said, ‘You know all the empty space at the front of your school? Why don’t we put a comic book store up there and keep Dragon Lady alive in some way?’”

Boyd, Menard, and Kilmartin convinced Dragon Lady owner Josh Biernet to transfer his subscriptions over to them, then started imagining their dream store.

“We didn’t want to do a huge space with back issues,” said Boyd. “There are a lot of traditional comic book shops in town, and I said when we were putting this all together, ‘If we’re going to do this, let’s not do a traditional comic book shop. Let’s do something unique, like a gathering space with a community aspect.’”

In addition to being a shop and clubhouse for comic lovers, the lounge will also function as an art gallery, showcasing work from artists in the city’s comic scene. The artist on display right now is Mike Del Mundo, whose portfolio includes almost 50 Marvel covers. For him, having his work on the walls of the Comic Book Lounge is a treat.

Artist Mike Del Mundo next to his work. Photo by Dean Bradley.

“We don’t really get a chance to enjoy what we do,” he said. “We’re so involved with hitting deadlines and whatnot, just to to put it all on the wall and enjoy it and digest it—it’s amazing.”

Kilmartin said that he hopes the fun, convention-like vibe of the lounge’s opening will be characteristic of the shop.

“Any small group of people who are interested in anything—essentially you all like same thing,” he said. “If you’re a sports fan, you might have your differences in teams that you like, but ultimately it’s the game that you love. There’s nothing quite as exhilarating as being in a room full of people who love the same thing.”

Daniel Clowes may be the popular guy at the alternative comics table now, with the success of comics such as Ghost World, Wilson, and the recently republished The Death-Ray, but he’s still unsure of how to react to a crowded room full of eager fans. “It’s basically like lifting up a log and expecting the […]

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Daniel Clowes (left), in conversation with Seth, admits that much of his insight into the minds of teen girls came from being the quiet kid at parties. Photo by Laura Godfrey/Torontoist.

Daniel Clowes may be the popular guy at the alternative comics table now, with the success of comics such as Ghost World, Wilson, and the recently republished The Death-Ray, but he’s still unsure of how to react to a crowded room full of eager fans. “It’s basically like lifting up a log and expecting the worms to entertain you. This is the most light I’ve ever seen in my life,” he joked Friday night at the International Festival of Authors, where he was interviewed by renowned Canadian cartoonist Seth (Palookaville).

Still, the audience wasn’t complaining. As a seminal artist during the growth of alternative comics in the 1980s, Clowes has some stories to tell. When he was 18 years old, for instance, he tracked down the reclusive cartoonist Steve Ditko, co-creator of Spider-Man, who happened to be living above a hardcore pornography theatre in New York. “This was before 42nd Street was like a Disney store,” said Clowes. “This was a really sleazy area; it was right out of Taxi Driver.” When he finally made it up to Ditko’s front door, though, all he got was a fleeting glimpse of the apartment and a door slammed in his face. “That was probably the greatest moment of my life.”

Anything for our idols, right?

Luckily, despite his supposed proclivity for dark basements, Clowes himself seems happy to cater to his readers. During the Q&A session, one female audience member referenced a scene in his cynical cult classic Ghost World that captures an uncanny understanding of the minds of certain teen girls. In the comic, recent high-school grad Enid, upon seeing an old man walking along the sidewalk, turns to her best friend Becky: “Oh my God, look! That little old man bought those pathetic flowers at the grocery store to take home to his wife! Oh God, it’s so cute I’m dying!”

The exploits of Enid and Becky may not describe everyone’s teenage experiences, but it certainly struck a nerve when it was published as its own comic book (or “graphic novel,” depending on who you ask) in 1997. And according to Clowes, a lot of that perspective came from being the quiet guy at school. “I was the kind of guy people would invite to parties but then forget was there,” Clowes explained. “So I would just be hanging out in the background, and then all of a sudden it would be like seven girls and me, and they would completely forget I was there. I felt like, ‘I’m hearing the real stuff they say when no one is around!’”

When artists like Daniel Clowes and Seth were growing up, comics were only just starting to be sold in mainstream bookstores, and being a fan of Iron Man was something to hide from a so-called “normal girl” if you wanted to keep her interest. Even within the comic world, there was a division between superhero creators and those who aimed for realism. “I always felt like I was in actual battle with those mainstream guys,” said Seth, “[… but] that has really mellowed out over the years—especially because those superhero guys won.”

He may have a point, inasmuch as we’ve lost track of the number of Batman, Superman, and Spider-Man lunchboxes and movie adaptations we’ve seen. But there’s more than one way to measure success—the lineup to meet Clowes and Seth after the event was proof of that.

]]>http://torontoist.com/2011/10/ifoa-2011-daniel-clowes-and-the-merits-of-quietude/feed/0Benjamin Rivers’ Sense of Snowhttp://torontoist.com/2011/05/benjamin_rivers_sense_of_snow/
http://torontoist.com/2011/05/benjamin_rivers_sense_of_snow/#commentsThu, 19 May 2011 18:00:00 +0000http://torontoist.com/2011/05/benjamin_rivers_sense_of_snow/The cover of Benjamin Rivers’ Snow. In Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf describes a woman’s entire life through the course of events that occur in a single day. In a similar way, Benjamin Rivers’ comicSnow captures a sense of Toronto focusing only on a single street: Queen Street West. Snow follows Dana, a young woman who […]]]>

The cover of Benjamin Rivers’ Snow.

In Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf describes a woman’s entire life through the course of events that occur in a single day. In a similar way, Benjamin Rivers’ comicSnow captures a sense of Toronto focusing only on a single street: Queen Street West. Snow follows Dana, a young woman who works at Abberline Books, a small shop on Queen Street West that falls victim to the slowing economy and shuts down. While attempting to deal with losing her job, she witnesses a traumatic event that forces her to reflect on how her life is changing and, more broadly, how the neighbourhood around her is also changing.

Snow is an exploration of the amorphous experience of urban living, an expression of the fact that each person’s lived experience of Toronto is as relevant a definition of the city as the next. “Toronto is a city of neighbourhoods and sometimes people forget that,” says Rivers, who has lived in the Grange for over six years. “The neighbourhoods are very diverse but also very close-knit. I leave my neighbourhood and it feels like I’m in another city completely.” He adds: “Sometimes I don’t feel comfortable because it doesn’t feel like at home.”
Rivers says he was inspired to write Snow by the changes he was observing on Queen West, especially the disappearances of small businesses. (Full disclosure: Rivers has also spoken at Gamercamp, a festival I co-founded.) In a case of life imitating art, Snow foreshadowed the closing of Pages when its fictional counterpart Abberline shutters in the second issue. At first, Rivers says, it was purely a narrative device, an interesting obstacle for the protagonist, but it became apparent to him as he was writing the story that it was a likely thing to happen. “Things seemed to be a little slower, a little deader” at the store, he remembers. “To see the traffic actually get a little less, I thought ‘yeah, this might actually be the case.'” Since the venerable independent bookstore shut its doors, Rivers has had former employees read Snow and mention how closely he had captured the atmosphere just prior to closing.

Panels from Snow depicting Abberline Books, the fictional stand-in for former Queen Street West bookstore Pages.

Local bookstores like Pages closed, in part, because they couldn’t compete with larger chains that could mark down prices based on bulk purchases, had a wide selection, and made online purchasing effortless. Snow, initially released in four parts, now has been compiled into one book for physical and digital release; Rivers is well aware of the irony of a work about small business closing likely finding most of its audience through larger, corporate services like Kobo or Apple’s iBookstore.
Rivers decided to release in the digital format to take advantage of the ability to reach consumers directly on devices that he feels have finally reached a point of replicating the comics experience faithfully. “It’s more accessible now because of e-readers—the Kobo, Kindle, and iPad—but before it wasn’t really the case, it was clunky: the best we had for getting digital comics or things not for print were web comics, which are sort of their own beast,” says Rivers. Now, a digital release “is so easy and cheap as long as you have the technical know-how or just have the gumption to do it. Why worry about a bunch of boxes of books that maybe won’t sell when I could reach ten times the people with digital release?”
Stores like the Beguiling and Silver Snail that sell comics and graphic novels have perhaps survived the downturn better by focusing on a niche audience. Rivers—who had a signing at Snail yesterday and has been a repeat exhibitor at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival—says these stores provide a space for people to congregate, not just to make purchases: “You don’t go to a bar to drink the beer, you go to talk to people also there. You go for community, not for the product necessarily.”

A still from the game based on Snow.

Snow has reached a broad audience already, and Rivers has noticed a special popularity among adult women, many of whom are experiencing comics for the first time as adults. “There’s something about the drawing or the synopsis,” he says, that appeals to women. “That’s the audience I like to reach with my work,” he adds, “because there’s not enough written for this audience.” Choosing a digital release, then, was also a way to increase accessibility to audiences that may feel intimidated entering a comic store. “I don’t think my mom will go into the Beguiling and search for books that she might like, but she will buy stuff off Amazon.”
In another forward-thinking move, Rivers has also created a game based on Snow that is freely available. In 2008, shortly after the first issue of Snow, Rivers was at the Artsy Games Incubator, an experimental game jam, and wanted to make a game. “Snow was in my head, because I had just published it,” he explains. Players assume Dana’s character, but instead of replicating the book’s content, he created a prequel to give players a sense of her experiences. He hopes it provides the reader greater kinship with his Snow protagonist and the world she knew, which is about to break apart.Snow is a meditation on the changing landscape of Toronto, and the role of citizens in shaping that change to enhance the city. With the book and game, Snow reminds us that while Toronto is so often disguised as other cities in film, there are many way to reflect this city and its stories. We’re inspired to wonder about the other Danas—the ones who call Kipling or Steeles or Morningside home—each with their own collection of experiences and interpretations of Toronto.Images courtesy of Benjamin Rivers.

]]>http://torontoist.com/2011/05/benjamin_rivers_sense_of_snow/feed/0Toronto Comics Fest, Ruining Mother’s Day Yet Againhttp://torontoist.com/2011/05/tcaf/
http://torontoist.com/2011/05/tcaf/#commentsMon, 09 May 2011 15:00:00 +0000http://torontoist.com/2011/05/tcaf/The worst part of the Toronto Comics and Arts Festival (TCAF)—if you can call it that—wasn’t keeping the impulse purchases in check (tough). Nor was it reconciling the sinking realization that we, unlike all the exhibitors within the Toronto Reference Library, lacked any artistic talent whatsoever. No, the real trouble was that, in what’s become […]]]>
The worst part of the Toronto Comics and Arts Festival (TCAF)—if you can call it that—wasn’t keeping the impulse purchases in check (tough). Nor was it reconciling the sinking realization that we, unlike all the exhibitors within the Toronto Reference Library, lacked any artistic talent whatsoever.
No, the real trouble was that, in what’s become something of a yearly ritual, we had to explain to our mothers why we would be late for Mother’s Day. Again. Because as soon as we thought we were ready to leave, there was simply another booth, print, sketch, or exhibitor that managed to draw us back in.

There was Jonathan Rosenberg, for example. The creator of the much-acclaimed webcomic Goats, active since 1997, is quite easily one of the longest-running comic artists and illustrators online. Or, on the opposite end of that spectrum, Caitlin Cass, a grad student from Buffalo whose work we had never heard of (a mail-only comic series, titled Great Moments in Western Civilization), but which featured just the sort of historical humour and storytelling that Victorian buffs and nerds could appreciate.
If you’re feeling slightly intimidated, however, a confession: though we tend to have our toes dipped in various realms of geekery, we are hardly the biggest of comic book nerds. We can barely tell Green Lantern from Green Arrow, and Edgar Wright was our introduction to the Scott Pilgrim universe. But therein lies the magic of TCAF. These sorts of slights are forgiven; you don’t need to be a hardcore comics nerd to have a good time. In fact, you don’t even have to come for the comics.
Founded by The Beguiling‘s Chris Butcher and Peter Birkemoe in 2003, the feztival is now in its sixth iteration, and the second in a row since going annual in 2010. Appropriately timed to coincide with Free Comic Book Day, Saturday and Sunday hours mean you can probably avoid any Mother’s Day shaming if you’re lucky—but that’s a mighty big if. After all, there are more panels, signings, speakers, and sales spread across both days to keep you occupied, and it’s wishful thinking to try to experience everything in just one day.

Top: the booth of cartoonist Chris Hastings, author of the online comic The Adventures of Dr. McNinja. Bottom: Local artist Michael Cho leafs through his table of super hero pin-ups and Toronto back alley drawings up for sale.

Indeed, it’s fascinating is to see how TCAF has grown in recent years. From its humble beginnings in Trinity-St. Paul’s to the old digs in the University of Toronto’s Victoria College building, it seems that even the Reference Library may soon be too small for the weekend’s festivities—but for good reason.
The library’s main atrium featured a range of artists, both big and small—just a fraction of the over-300 artists promised ahead of the event. Vicki Nerino, featured in the festival’s beautiful promotional video “Pencil It In,” sold us one of her raunchy, animal-themed stories, while Dustin Harbin of Koyama Press travelled from North Carolina with some of his autobiographical comics and black-and-white prints in tow. Having foolishly passed on Michael Cho‘s Toronto Back Alley drawings at last month’s Artists Help Japan fundraiser, we made sure not to make the same mistake again.Torontoistcontributor and The Princess Planet cartoonist Brian McLachlan was also on hand, doing another round of ugly caricatures, with a number of prints available for purchase as well. He was just one of many exhibitors featuring kid-friendly fare, including a big showing by Owl magazine in the second-floor Salon (to which McLachlan is also a contributor).
Upstairs in the Salon, it was a similar situation—but this time, as if the entire internet webcomics community had been packed into one room. Goats, Questionable Content, Dinosaur Comics, Wondermark, Octopus Pie, Nedroid, Hark! A Vagrant—there were simply too many to name from memory. And quite frankly, it was easy to be overwhelmed; many of the attendees and friends we spoke to on Saturday seemed to agree, as we struggled to squeeze through the packed and far-flung crowd of festivalgoers. But if you approached all that creative excess with the right frame of mind, it could also mean meeting new artists you might not have otherwise encountered.
Caitlin Cass, for example, the aforementioned graduate student from Buffalo, told us she can only afford to go to one festival per year, and though the annual Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art festival in New York was tempting, TCAF won out. “A lot of the other festivals aren’t free,” Cass explained, “so you tend to get more foot traffic here.”
That seemed to benefit the Hand Eye Society, taking up prime real estate at the Salon’s second floor entrance. The group of Toronto game developers had their latest indie arcade cabinet, The High Roller, on display, in addition to Spooky Squid Games‘ “They Bleed Pixels,” available for attendees to play.

Anthony Del Col (co-creator), Conor McCreery (co-creator) and Andy B (artist), three of the men behind local comic Kill Shakespeare.

At the opposite end of the table, Mathew Kumar, a Toronto-based freelance writer (and former Torontoist contributor), had his experimental video game ‘zine Exp. available for purchase—and by Sunday afternoon, had managed to sell out of his latest Legend of Zelda–themed limited-edition issue, “Minus Two.”
Impressive, considering that in Kumar’s own words, he sells a product that “doesn’t have a comic in it.” However, he says it shouldn’t be surprising that the festival’s scope has expanded beyond its comics-themed name.
“People rely on genre-fication to understand things,” explained Kumar. “It can’t just be the ‘Toronto Stuff Festival.’ That doesn’t make any sense.” Instead, he feels the event should be viewed as more of an umbrella under which the city’s diverse creative communities can help one another out—of which comics are just one aspect.
However, exhibitors were only part of the TCAF weekend draw, and a great deal of fun came from the the panels, speakers, and talks that were scheduled throughout. Some—including Saturday’s Machine of Death: Draw and Guess panel, featuring Toronto-local Ryan North amongst others, and special guest Pendleton Ward’s Adventure Time panel earlier in the day—were standing-room only, and attracted long, snaking lines an hour before their scheduled start times.
And that is perhaps one of TCAF’s greatest qualities—accessibility. Mere steps from Bloor Station, the festival is in an ideal location to attract; there were kids, families, and a good selection of seniors. A few attendees came dressed up as their favourite fictional characters. Others seemed to walk in off the street, not entirely sure what to expect. But if their smiles were any indication, all seemed pleased with the results.Photos by Matthew Braga.
[UPDATE, May 9, 12:25 PM: When originally published, we failed to include artist Brian McLachlan in our recap. The omission has now been remedied.]

]]>http://torontoist.com/2011/05/tcaf/feed/8Graphic Novella The Next Day Takes on Suicidehttp://torontoist.com/2011/05/graphic_novella_the_next_day_takes_on_suicide_and_what_comes_next/
http://torontoist.com/2011/05/graphic_novella_the_next_day_takes_on_suicide_and_what_comes_next/#commentsWed, 04 May 2011 18:15:00 +0000http://torontoist.com/2011/05/graphic_novella_the_next_day_takes_on_suicide_and_what_comes_next/A page from The Next Day. Tina Kardassis, 34, has had a lot of rebuilding to do. As one of four interview subjects for The Next Day, a new graphic novella and interactive animated documentary based on surviving attempted suicide, she has opened up and revealed some of the most intimate details of her life—but […]]]>

A page from The Next Day.

Tina Kardassis, 34, has had a lot of rebuilding to do. As one of four interview subjects for The Next Day, a new graphic novella and interactive animated documentary based on surviving attempted suicide, she has opened up and revealed some of the most intimate details of her life—but for a good reason.
“I went through hell as a kid, and I just don’t think there’s enough education about depression,” she says. “To me, depression was when somebody died, and you were sad about it, so I didn’t know what was wrong with me. […] My suicide attempt is one of the things I’m most ashamed of in my life, so this was my chance to turn a negative into a positive, and be able to help others.”

This is the driving hope behind The Next Day, published by the innovative new multimedia company Pop Sandbox (the people behind last year’s highly acclaimed graphic novel Kenk, based on Toronto’s infamous bike thief). The graphic novella, illustrated in a touchingly simple, child-like style by American comic book artist John Porcellino, launched last night to an overflowing room at the National Film Board.
The project is the brainchild of Paul Peterson, a former counsellor, who conceived of the idea about 10 years ago after coming across a wrecked car being towed away on a snowy day in Napanee. He later learned that the car’s driver, intoxicated, had gone home afterwards and killed himself with his cancerous wife’s morphine, essentially orphaning their two children, since his wife died shortly after.
Peterson was left wondering, what if that driver had waited one more day? Would he have made the same decision if he wasn’t acting on impulse? And what if you could tell people that life can get better?
With that idea in mind, Peterson got together with the Pop Sandbox team to create something that discussed depression and what comes after attempted suicide. They wanted it to come from real people’s stories, but they also wanted to make sure it was safe for those people to participate. One of the concerns was whether talking about suicide would escalate the risk of self-harm, so one of the criteria for inclusion was that participants needed to be two years away from their most recent attempt. Through collaboration with a representative of CMHA, they found four volunteers willing to share their stories.

Panelists from last night’s launch. Photo by Andrew Louis/Torontoist.

Kardassis, whose depression wasn’t diagnosed until she was 26 years old, was at a bar—a familiar place during her toughest years—when she suddenly started crying, and started to make her way home. “The whole way home I thought ‘I’m gonna end it,'” she told Torontoist after last night’s presentation. “I went home and tried to hang myself in the closet, just like that. It wasn’t something I’d been building up to, or thinking about, or planning, it was kind of a spontaneous event when I was extremely intoxicated. It scared the hell out of me. The belt that I was trying to use to hang myself slipped through, thank God.”
The next morning, she told her parents about it straight away, and by the next week, she started taking medication to help control her condition. Since then, she has also entered therapy to make sure it never happens again.
One of the things Kardassis was emphatic about last night was how good life can be afterwards; she is now married, with a house and three obviously beloved cats. It looks like she may have also found new friends in her fellow participants, Chantel and Ryan (the fourth, Jenn, works as a nurse and couldn’t make it to the event), who she actually met for the first time at the launch. Sitting side by side in the audience as their own recorded voices suddenly came through the speakers, they held hands in support of each other. According to Kardassis, it was an instant bond.
As for the interactive animated documentary, which is set to launch online sometime later this month, The Next Day co-writer Jason Gilmore says it takes parts of the recorded interviews from the four participants and allows the user to choose keywords that guide them through an empty house surrounded by a coming storm. “We chose that metaphor because of the connections that we made between the participants,” Gilmore says. “They all spoke of this process of dealing with suicidal thoughts in the same way, which was very much like a storm gathering.”
In choosing the unusual approach of a graphic novella and an online animated documentary—and next year, possibly a play as well—the team behind this project is aiming to reach the very demographic most at risk of attempting suicide. “I feel really proud, even though we just had to tell our story,” Kardassis says. “When we’re young, we don’t know what’s going on, and that’s when we need the education. Even as a 20-something I still didn’t know what depression was; nobody told me what that was, and I didn’t understand it.”
The Next Day is available in bookstores now. The interactive animated documentary will be launching online later this month on the NFB and TVO‘s websites.

]]>http://torontoist.com/2011/05/graphic_novella_the_next_day_takes_on_suicide_and_what_comes_next/feed/02010 Hero: The Toronto Comic Arts Festivalhttp://torontoist.com/2010/12/2010_hero_tcaf/
http://torontoist.com/2010/12/2010_hero_tcaf/#commentsThu, 23 Dec 2010 13:00:00 +0000http://torontoist.com/2010/12/2010_hero_tcaf/Bif! Pow! Comics aren't just for kids anymore! For the many Torontonians who love comics and cartooning, headlines like that are like a bad houseguest: they show up to your place uninvited, get old real fast, and embarrass you in front of your friends. In 2003, though, a forward-thinking group of proud Torontoian comic fans, creators, and sellers decided to throw one hell of a party anyway—TCAF, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival.
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Bif! Pow! Comics aren’t just for kids anymore! For the many Torontonians who love comics and cartooning, headlines like that are like a bad houseguest: they show up to your place uninvited, get old real fast, and embarrass you in front of your friends. In 2003, though, a forward-thinking group of proud Torontoian comic fans, creators, and sellers decided to throw one hell of a party anyway—TCAF, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival.
In addition to demonstrating for the umpteenth time that comics were more than kiddie fare, the group was hoping that TCAF would help shed some deserved light on the already vibrant and thriving Toronto comic scene. They wrote, at the time, that: “Often in Toronto, ‘comic books’ are regarded mainly as the mainstream super-hero material typified by SPIDER-MAN and SUPERMAN. This is despite the fact that some of the world’s greatest alternative comics writers and artists live in the area, and the city is rich with alternative and underground publishing. The goal of the festival and the TCAF organization is to present the quality and prestige of the local and international artists in a package that’s respected and recognized.”
Ambitious words for a small festival in its first year. But TCAF not only survived its first days—it thrived. It highlighted local creators, featuring established talent like Chester Brown and Seth, as well as emerging talent such as one Bryan Lee O’Malley, who had recently written a little book about a guy named Scott Pilgrim. (Maybe you’ve heard of him?)
In the years that followed, TCAF built on its success and continued to grow, expanding its scope to feature cartoonists who publish online—including, of course, Toronto’s own remarkablewebcomicscene. What’s more, the festival managed to attract and feature major international artists year after year, the likes of Daniel Clowes and Paul Pope, helping to establish Toronto and TCAF as a (dare we say it?) world-class attraction. TCAF has been so successful that in 2009 it went from being a biennial event to a festival we can look forward to every friggin’ year.
As if all this wasn’t heroic enough, TCAF did all this while remaining absolutely free to attend—something rather rare, special, and precious in the comic-convention world.
Events, of course, don’t come into being on their own. Chris Butcher, one of TCAF’s original founders, its current festival director, and its greatest champion, has worked heroically to nurture, grow, and mature TCAF into what is today. Toronto’s comics community owes him, and everyone else who made TCAF what it is today, a great debt. Excelsior!

]]>http://torontoist.com/2010/12/2010_hero_tcaf/feed/02010 Villain: Jason Kiefferhttp://torontoist.com/2010/12/villain_jason_kieffer/
http://torontoist.com/2010/12/villain_jason_kieffer/#commentsTue, 14 Dec 2010 14:30:00 +0000http://torontoist.com/2010/12/villain_jason_kieffer/Apparently, Cabbagetown is the place for rabble-gazing in Toronto. It's here that cartoonist Jason Kieffer gleaned the material for his book, The Rabble of Downtown Toronto, a collection of forty profiles of street people, many of whom are homeless, drug-addicted, or mentally disabled. Here we find the sensitively named “Escaped Mental Patient,” who "urinates & masturbates in public" and is identified by a “weird growth on neck," or “Crazy Hand Lady,” marked by her “greasy hair” and “screaming fits…accompanied by hysterical laughter” [PDF].
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Apparently, Cabbagetown is the place for rabble-gazing in Toronto. It’s here that cartoonist Jason Kieffer gleaned the material for his book, The Rabble of Downtown Toronto, a collection of forty profiles of street people, many of whom are homeless, drug-addicted, or mentally disabled. Here we find the sensitively named “Escaped Mental Patient,” who “urinates & masturbates in public” and is identified by a “weird growth on neck,” or “Crazy Hand Lady,” marked by her “greasy hair” and “screaming fits…accompanied by hysterical laughter” [PDF].
Kieffer, who catalogues these individuals like a biologist would specimen samples, has divided readers.
Some, like the Star’s Joe Fiorito—who called it “a nasty little book”—have called Rabble out for making jokes at the expense of its usually homeless subjects. In 2007, after publishing early versions of some of the profiles that appear in the book on BlogTO, Kieffer was asked to stop contributing to the site after its readership “went insane” over the subject matter, he says.
Meanwhile, some others have argued that Kieffer’s project is a call for Torontonians to pay more attention to the “rabble,” a position that Kieffer himself has adopted. He writes on his website: “I see marginalized individuals on a daily basis who try and connect with people around them only to be ignored, written off, or labeled.”
But that’s exactly what Kieffer has himself done. In Rabble, he breaks down his subjects to their basest, most conspicuous qualities, stripping them of any dignity. Like a macabre textbook, the book points out what Kieffer sees as their weaknesses and idiosyncrasies, defining them by their disabilities. In doing this, he transforms individual circumstances into crude caricatures. Wanting Torontonians to stop ignoring the homeless is a noble cause, but Kieffer’s gone about it all the wrong way. He might have interviewed the subjects and looked at the factors that could have contributed to their predicaments, shifting the focus away from their street personas and onto their humanity. Instead, he turns them into circus freaks.
Not only is Kieffer’s book an exercise in how not to raise awareness of a social problem, but representing real people in a bizarre tourist guide of where and how to find them—it even has maps—is inherently problematic. In Rabble, we have a group of vulnerable subjects, many of whom work and sleep on the streets. An encyclopedic catalogue of their weaknesses and idiosyncrasies could even potentially target them for violence or persecution. It also shows, of course, a gross disrespect for their privacy.
Numerous times since its publication, Kieffer has defended the book by saying that it’s not supposed to be funny. We don’t doubt him. We wonder, however, whether it is supposed to be mean. With smug superiority, Kieffer treats his subjects as just that: subjects. To him, these are people to be studied, scrutinized, pointed at. At its core, The Rabble of Downtown Toronto, and Kieffer, show a fundamental lack of compassion, which is, of course, what most of the “rabble” need most.

]]>http://torontoist.com/2010/12/villain_jason_kieffer/feed/13News Roundup: Fan Expo Canadahttp://torontoist.com/2010/09/news_roundup_fan_expo_canada/
http://torontoist.com/2010/09/news_roundup_fan_expo_canada/#commentsWed, 01 Sep 2010 14:30:13 +0000http://torontoist.com/2010/09/news_roundup_fan_expo_canada/Photo by My TVC 15 from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. Those interested in getting their sci-fi/horror/gaming/superhero freak on came out in higher numbers than expected last weekend for HobbyStar Marketing’s showcase pop culture convention, Fan Expo Canada. Although he did not offer any refunds, the sports and entertainment marketing company’s CEO Aman Gupta issued an […]]]>

Those interested in getting their sci-fi/horror/gaming/superhero freak on came out in higher numbers than expected last weekend for HobbyStar Marketing’s showcase pop culture convention, Fan Expo Canada. Although he did not offer any refunds, the sports and entertainment marketing company’s CEO Aman Gupta issued an apology on behalf of the Fan Expo team [PDF] for its mismanagement of the event, which outpaced the Metro Toronto Convention Centre’s fire and safety limitations, causing huge lines, flared tempers, and great delays for those getting in and out of the building.MORE AT BOOKS.TORONTOIST.COM >
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